Remodeling on a dime

Last year we remodeled our kitchen. Prior to that, we had an 80’s kitchen. Seriously! We had a built in oven and stove top, the oven was brown and the stove top was green, 80’s green!! The backsplash was gold stars (which I Painted) and our old countertops used to be white with large and small gold stars on them. I looked high and low to find a picture just to show you the ugliness factor, but I couldn’t find one. Just picture it in your mind though. White with large and small gold stars!!! UGLY.AS.CAN.BE.
So we finally decided to tear it all out. Now let me remind you that when you walk in my front door, you walk right into the kitchen. When you walk in my back door, you have to walk through the kitchen to get into any other room in my house. There was no getting around the remodel. AND you have to walk through my kitchen to get to the bathroom. All of these elements make a kitchen remodel even harder. So we gutted the kitchen, laundry room and dining room and opened it all up. Let me also remind you that I had 4 kids under age 4 during this remodel. I vowed that it would be our first and last remodel EVER! We have a farm house that was built in 1890. Nothing was square, and you wouldn’t believe the weird things we found in the walls. We wanted a new look, but at a budgeted price. So….my husband and father in law built my cabinets themselves. It was their first time so there were some bumps in the road, but they turned out beautiful!

I TOOK THIS PICTURE AT NIGHT, AND THERE’S A STRANGE GLARE ON THE CABINETS FROM MY LIGHTS 🙂

He had this window that he found at an old antique store in town and he painted our wedding vows on it. It looks out onto our back porch now.

My brother remodeled his kitchen a few years ago, and my husband dismantled it with him. So he had all of this old wainscoting that he saved in our barn. He sanded it all down and painted it and it is now our backsplash. Another friend remodeled her kitchen and was getting rid of a big old cast iron sink. We saved it and it is now the new sink in our house. So far, no money spent. We found a brand new front door at an auction for $30. I bought a new kitchen table off craigslist for $125. We bought 12″ rough cut lumber that we sanded and stained and finished for our flooring (only 99 cents a foot)

We didn’t skimp on the windows only because we wanted to make sure they weren’t drafty. We did find an old barn window that we sanded painted as used that oes between my kitchen and sunroom porch. A woman was remodeling her barn and selling an old door online, I looked at the door and didn’t like it but saw a cool vintage style light fixture in the background, I emailed her and asked if she was willing to sell it, she was for $30! I spray painted part of it black and love it! We bought rough cut lumber for the moulding and sanded and painted it ($0.40 a foot). My father in law found a big old piece of butcher block that they were throwing away at his workplace and they let us have it for free, we sanded and refinished it with food grade finish and it is now the top of our island. Our neighbor was going to burn these old barn beams so he gave them to us and we used them in the doorway.

We decided to rewire and put a new panel box in our basement which was our biggest expense of the entire project. All in all, we were able to take something old, refinish it and make it into something new that we loved, all for very inexpensively.

I understand that this is NOT the style everyone is looking for, BUT regardless of your taste, you can take something and fit it to your taste, you just need to be creative, and shop around.

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About Us

Welcome to 4 Her Home! We are Marissa & Sara, two creative stay-at-home moms who love to find great deals.
Our goal is to provide you with resources, from meal plans and recipes to debt management tips and budget tools, to equip you to become CEO of your home.